One Year Later!

So. The Angry Ginger blog is almost a year old!

In fact in discovering that my 1st post was on 1st September last year, I realised I have completely forgotten about Mum's (a.k.a. "Granny Jan") birthday; Hi Ma!!!

....I've been so preoccupied with forthcoming Flo'Day (on the 4th) and the fact that I have her this Saturday as opposed to Sunday...and, and, and....

Luckily I have enough time to get a card and think of a decent pressie.

In the meantime to make up for the recent lack of pictures, I will now shut it and you can look at these...

Ooo Ooo Ooo!

New blocks I bought at the weekend (about to be flattened)


Gotta love the ghetto 'Nappy & Trainers' look!

Lil implements Operation Destruction....


Late Breaking Update: Well, getting late for me...bedtime soon...Check out some of these older photos I just got from R. They're scanned from a cheap scanner off a photoprint from a cheapish digital camera, so excuse any 'artefacts'...plus I must remember to clean my scanner glass...Unfortunately the one of me and a very young Lil (must have been oooh January or February....freezing anyway) just wouldn't seem to rotate and save (best not to ask), must be that stupid beard I had....and why didn't anyone tell me??!?!


Clicky clicky for biggie big!

Larng Weekend!

So. I did not charge up the Nokia and so there are no photos of todays session with Flo. Apologies.

I will therefore try to make amends by summing up the day in as few words as possible:

Byootifarl Chile!!!

OK. So we went to the farm to say Gak-Gak to the Ducks, Hok-Hok to the Pigs, Wyaaeeergh to the Goats (how that works I don't know) and Eee ee Yayayayay to the Tunnel (it's an echo thing).

Flo very shouty today which reached a pitch when we bumped into Rosie in Tesco. I managed to stop the crying with a bottle and 'yeehaw, baby' buggy games...don't ask.

Tuna, carrot & parsnip for lunch, some dancing and stickers then met Teh Ricola in Town (very briefly I'm afraid) at the All New Tapas Bar(TM)...which is actually just like an Organic Riverside Superbar....

Anyway, Lil loved pouring water over herself, yelling at some chinese people and flirting with male Ricola...cut short due to tiredness. She slept on the way back while my bladder slowly burst then decided to kick off just as I got her in the flat and me in the bathroom with my fly open....

...Anyway. Swings...Dinner...Play. Bath...Books....home for bed.

I'm sure this is just a normal day for anyone else with a child....but...every day?

Surely not?!

Indulging an obsession

Many of you will know of my penchant for slightly offbeat t-shirts...and admittedly there have been some bad choices in the past, namely what I'll call the "9/11" shirt.

A lot of them I get from Threadless but I came across this one on BoingBoing and I couldn't resist...for the non-arabic readers, it says "I am not a Terrorist!". Class!

The Big Hungry Fat Lying Caterpillar!

So. some of 'teh redesign' is coming along and some bits aren't. There's a few things I need to do that involve hand-editing HTML which the Beta wont let me do yet, and I'm really not happy with the colours...and I want to get rid of that Digg'd stories thing and add a more pluralistic 'What I Bookmarked' feature: with del.icio.us, and more 'found this through rss because I have some knowledge and a massive ego' linkage.

In other news: I joined the humanists, got no kind of answer from the Foreign Office, bought loads of neodymium magnets and batteries (possibly the wrong batteries, but we shall see), got a cool book, danced with Flo (to many, many nursery rhymes), bathed her and took her to House of Baboo....and worked, obviously.

I am not mentioning work because it makes me rant about bureaucracy and poor organisation and the french work ethic and the people who seem to 'panic involve' themselves....and too much coffee....too much coffffeeeeee!!1!1!!


Sorry, no pictures today...I will try to sort out the Nokia for "Lil Sunday".

I have some kind of holiday until Tuesday now....heeyaagh! :-)

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes....

....turn and face the strange!

Things might look a little odd around here for a while as I'm trying out the new Beta Blogger features....

Time may change me, but I can't change time....

Bushes, Brambles and Baby

Not together you understand, that would be madness!

[UPDATE: Take a look at the Ricky Gervais thing below...now featuring both videos!]

No. Yesterday I pruned blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry bushes, cleared a bit of an area around them and generally sorted out what exists on the allotment. Which included some serious bramble infestation...my arms look like an Emo-Kid's ;-)

Had Flo this afternoon, so here's a few pics and a video from the other day.



We're about to go into 1 whole day per weekend mode...which means 10-7, lunch and dinner and a bath...pretty soon it'll be the whole weekend every other weekend, which also means I can (for example) meet M&D in London or in Essex with the reli's...and Unky Joe when he's back.

Bought her some nifty soft shoes today. Brown kinda trainery-bootie things, which go ace with her new combats...and the pink knitted hoody! Still no mistaking she's a baby girl but a little less "sea of pink".

David Brent at Microsoft

Two hilarious videos Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant did for Microsoft!

# 1


# 2

This Here Is A Documentary!

Gotta love those internets! Thanks to all the tubes I have been working from home today, which means two things:

1. I get to sit on the sofa drinking tea while working on Daptop, torrenting some "Dr Who" I missed on Gurimac, with some TV/Video/Music/Radio on in the background.
2. I get to go to Tesco to buy Flo delicious nutritionals for dinner.

So I thought I'd make a little 'documentary' of this evening's Flo-sesh. Bought a shedload of fresh Salmon and Tuna (mostly for Rosie to freeze) and added to my already fairly copious vege collection...and a new toy for Flo. It's Tom...In his firetruck!



This here is slow sautéed carrot, onion and red pepper...



...to go with the salmon (she loves her fish that girl)....and no it's not all for her!


Of course I poached the salmon after this shot!

Picked her up at 5:30 accompanied by the usual shouting, waving, leg pumping that greets me and brought her round for some playing, while I sorted out her dinner.



Then dinner time. I obviously have my hands full so no pics of that ;-)



Then while I run the bath (and Lil shouts at me, demanding to get in the water) I strip her off, then in she goes....



Then after a good long splash and me attempting to keep her from drinking bathwater, it's out for a cuddle wrapped in a towel.

Stick her in her jimjams and we look out the window at the park, look at picture books (with me making the appropriate animal noises), a bit of walking practice then back to Mumma's.



Usually there's a bit of argie-bargie between Flo & Es (vying for attention) but not this time. Rosie warmed her bottle and then I put her to bed...no crying! :-)

Pants, not Rants!

Yeah!

I was going to post a massive rant about how pissed off I am with the ol' Leb' sitch, starting with how it has completely borked my 'in planning' winter holiday to Beirut and some of the more interesting Byzantine sites in Lebanon...but my heart wasn't really in it, because the whole Hezbollah/Zionist thing makes me sad. And Lil is away for the weekend...

Then I thought I'd do a little post for Ricola(f) who I spoke to today for the first time in ages....mainly because, well I assume everyone reads the blog and so I feel like I have touched you all (he heheheh <---- Beavis laugh)...and turns out Ricola(f) is the same but in reverse. Namely, she reads the blog and thus knows what is going on for me and Flo.



So this post is for Teh Ricola!...hope to see you Sunday :-)

Oh, and I'm looking at a trip to Syria instead!

How opportune...

In honour of the Balloon Fiesta here in Bristol this weekend (no, I wont be going) I bought a pack of balloons and blew them all up for Lil.

She went mad-excited! I particularly loved the way she had to have one in each hand.....

Vidjyo!

BTW that phone you can see in the pix is the Motorola iPodPhone that never was...I managed to get one back then, never used it, took the battery out and put some seeds in it...now Lil has a one-off-probably-worth-loads-on-ebay object of distraction when I photo her.

Just a quickie....

Yum Yum!....Seaweed!!!

Surprise!

Had some unscheduled daddy time today....which is just as well as I forgot my camera phone yesterday while we were at the Child Festival...it was ace!


This is an action shot of her playing "hide in the faerie fabric"...yes, she is standing up

Anyway, Flo was havng a mad half-hour when she first came round it was extremely funny, but you kind of have to witness it yourself in order to appreciate the weirdness...excuse the nudity, but it was hot today! :-)

Went to the farm (for a change, heh!) and every time the cockerel crowed cock-a-doodle-do, Flo said "Gock Gock Gock"...which I suppose is a fair impression.

Having a Wii

I AM GOING TO HAVE A WII!!

:-)

Far Cry on what is tipped to be the coolest console yet?

In other news, Teh Byootifarl Chile is back and byootifelahr!

Going to take her to the Childrens Festival on the Downs tomorrow I think....will post some photos &c. <---- new, old-skool etc! Seriously though. The fact that Far Cry is going to be on Wii has literally just decided me on the purchase!

Oh, this is a bit odd....

Hey Dad!

Wierd. Not you (him), but what happened...

Apropos of nothing (well actually this site what I made and run) I started putting together a one-pager for my recently semi-retired Dad (whom I also love). Not having a lot to say other than stories of fun and, well, me getting in trouble all I could put for "filler" content was something along the lines of:

"I am a dad and a grandad, and brilliant at both. I have a lovely wife, a big dog, 2 boys (one of whom is an animal-geek, the other a techno-geek) and 2 insane cats....." etc etc.

So I thought I'd dig out whatever content was on his old companies website (Google Cache if worst comes to worst)....using a combination of "gareth smith architect charter" I eventually found the site and the wierd photo from his CV page, but was curiously side-tracked to another site which contained this little nugget of comedy photo-posing gold!

Dwarfism does not (to my knowledge) run in my family ;-)

I particularly like the frog-guy with his knee-pose (and nice shoes) and the jaunty angle at which the (obviously Irish) digger-guy sports his bonce protector.

Enough!

In other news: My mate Tom went here the other day....



...actually come to think of it he did not specify if he was there before the fire started, or later when called "on the shout".....

So. Cheers "Grandad Gareth", here's to webtarnet fame!

ps. I'll get round to the site one day Dad, honest ;-)